


squiddles are social creatures

by windingwoods



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Derse and Prospit, F/F, Family Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 18:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13507491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windingwoods/pseuds/windingwoods
Summary: Rose Lalonde, child prodigy, sister, member of the L. M. B. B. S. H. C. A. committee, metaphoric stuffed bunny, and how her life unravels.





	squiddles are social creatures

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was meant to be a fun experiment about the dynamics between prospit and derse players but ended up as some kind of vignettes monster full of self indulgence. whoopsie.  
> tiny heads-up: karkat and nepeta aren't in a romantic relationship at any point in this work. it might look like the kids are trying to break them up at some point but that's not the case!  
> title from the squiddles song (deeply unironically)

It’s the summer solstice when Rose, four years old and still holding on to Roxy’s clammy hand so that she won’t get lost in the crowd of the festival, meets her best friend. Roxy has dragged her to where Jane is and for a short, blinding moment all that Rose can sense is a tidal wave so raw it feels like it’s searing her eyebrows, her nostrils. Then it’s gone, and she blinks the black spots out.

“C’mon, Rosie, say hello,” Roxy’s saying to her in the lilting tone she always uses when Derse seeps into Rose’s dreams unnoticed, and only then does she properly see the little thing in front of her.

“Hello, child of the Green Sun,” Rose says, because her flair for the dramatic has already started to rear its head inside of her and because she’s still a bit wobbly from getting washed over with this unknown girl’s magic, so she might as well pay it due respect. “Name’s Rose.”

She pauses, then adds, “Lalonde.” Roxy winks down at her.

The child of the Green Sun, terrifying in all her mighty forty inches stature, pops a handful of cotton candy into her mouth, then licks every finger clean and holds the hand out with an expectant smile. “Jade Harley,” she declares with a subtle air of satisfaction; she rolls the R in Harley like it’s some kind of private joke.

When Rose takes her sticky hand Jade’s dog-like ears twitch on top of her head as a spark of green dances in her eyes. It would be eerie if it weren’t for the toothy grin that splits Jade’s face (ah, fangs) and the warmth of her hand, so different from the slithering cold of the horrorterrors. She’s clearly a Prospit witch and Rose wonders how must the yellow garb look on her, or what do the clouds show her.

She wonders if they could hang out in their dreams sometimes.

When Jade asks her to go get candy apples together because “John said they’re super good! John’s my brother, you know?” it’s easy to let go of Roxy’s hand to better match Jade’s hurried little feet.

“I hope they can be friends,” Jane whispers from behind them as she drags Roxy along, most likely to keep an eye on their baby sisters (not that Rose would ever need anything like flimsy sisterly surveillance, it’s just that no one seems to share that specific opinion of hers), and the subtle thrill of her voice makes Rose’s usual urge to be contrary loosen up a smidge.

 

***

 

“Something very important is happening today!” Jade’s tinny voice resonates from the phone with enough vibrancy Rose has to distance the thing from her ear with a twinge. “To you, I mean. The Mother Skaia told me.”

“At last, world domination for me? The masses will crown me in laurel, Jade Harley?”

That makes her laugh the snort-like little giggle that usually means she finds whatever caused it to be utterly ridiculous but is too gracious to say; most of the times it’s directed at John, sometimes Jake, and of course the frightful weirdo beast she insists on keeping as her familiar, Becquerel. Gods, does Rose love Becquerel.

“You’re silly,” Jade’s saying now, smile still tangible in her words. It makes something inside of Rose jingle a happy sound. “But really, let me know how it goes! Gotta go!” And with that she hangs up with little to no consideration for the burning curiosity she’s just left Rose to wallow into until whatever is supposed to happen happens.

Some part of her scrunches up in distaste at the notion that the clouds of Skaia might know more about her life to come than herself, but she figures even a young prodigy in the Seeing field (or kind of every field, that’s what being a young prodigy is about after all) might have some setbacks, especially when confronted with an all-knowing, all-seeing godly entity. Nothing that some practice can’t overcome though.

So she brushes it aside and scampers downstairs for breakfast: it’s Thursday and Thursdays mean fresh baked goods from the Crockers. She nearly tumbles into the kitchen as the tip of one of her slippers catches in the hem of the carpet, but she manages to make a recovery just in time to see two sets of eyes, one amber and one red, both peeking from two pairs of sunglasses.

There sure are two boys in her kitchen, eating _her_ pastries.

“Green motherfucking Sun,” she says, and the boy with the red eyes almost chokes on his raspberry scone as Mom exclaims, “Rose Lalonde!” in all her mighty, motherly indignation. It doesn’t really have any effect compared to the much more jarring reality of Rose’s breakfast getting stolen in front of her very eyes by whoever these two marauders might be.

“These _marauders_ ,” Mom is saying now as Roxy giggles from across the table, and Rose doesn’t dare wondering whether she’s spoken out loud or just thought a bit too hard for Mom’s magic not to pick up on it, “are your brothers from your father’s side of the family. They’re going to live with us from now on.”

Both marauders fidget in their chairs at that, whether at the mention of Father or at the unwanted attention Rose couldn’t tell, but Raspberry Scone swallows around a morsel and declares with all too much detachment not to betray his nerves, “I’m your twin, actually.”

When he pauses to stare at his plate like he’s looking for answers in the shapes of the crumbs and the smudges of jam (is he mumbling something to himself?) his brother elbows him in the side just barely, and Raspberry Scone stutters out, “Dave Strider, nice to meet ya.”

That does stir up some memories, memories of Mom avoiding conversations and Roxy looking sad and—

“Rose Lalonde. That’s my favorite snack you’re eating.”

It’s a Thursday morning when Rose, ten years old and no longer holding onto anything but her pastries of choice and favorite books, meets her brothers.

 

***

 

The shop smells faintly of incense and fancy candles, Roxy’s favorites this time. She’s sitting behind the counter, legs crossed at the ankles and smile ready to flash at any sign of customers, the spitting image of Mom. She’s put Dirk on inventory duty and the scratchy sound of his quill fills the room as he goes over every shelf, humming to himself every time he checks something on his list.

Rose is nestled in the background, collapsed in a heap of cushions with intricate patterns that cover the reserved area of the shop, hidden by a half-drawn thick curtain. It’s kind of just a niche in the wall with a fancy wooden chest wedged in it, but it’s always been her favorite spot. Especially since Dave’s started hanging out with her in there.

“Comfy?” she asks to the lump of brotherly limbs sprawled on her lap. Dave’s head is starting to feel heavy on her thigh but she’s not about to tell him that, not when he’s still stretched so thin over his last attempt to talk with the horrorterrors from the night before. It’s not going very well.

Dave makes a low sound of confirmation and Rose smiles, runs a hand through the tangles in his hair at the base of his neck. “You’ll get used to it. Them.”

More scribbling from Dirk’s quill, then silence.

“They mean no harm, plus they guide ghosts to their eternal reward. They’ll show you the way in the dark when you die.”

“Um, Rosie,” comes Roxy’s voice from the other side of the curtain, “I think you’re making it worse.”

“Thanks,” Dave mumbles, maybe at Rose’s perfectly sound reassurances, maybe at Roxy’s unnecessary concern. Rose has no idea. She holds him a bit closer, for good measure.

Then the bell chimes and a customer walks in: the lighting in their shop is dim at best and the curtain obscures part of her vision but Rose still knows who’s there before even hearing Dirk’s warm, “oh, hi there, Kanaya.”

Kanaya smiles, an expanse of white under darker than death lips, and the faint glow of her skin comes to a regrettable stop as she dips her head to Dirk and Roxy in greeting, ever so polite.

“Shapeshifting painkillers for you, right?” Roxy asks, already rummaging through the orders Mom’s left prepared for them.

Kanaya nods, scratches her cheek. “It’s Full Moon tomorrow and Jade’s staying over. I can’t do much else for her.”

Roxy waves a hand in what’s her universal No Worries gesture, right before producing a small vial and a squishy bag of something red— ah, that sure is blood.

“A little treat on the house,” she sing songs in an almost conspiratory tone over Kanaya’s feeble attempts at refusing the gift and Dave’s deadpan inquiries about the provenance of said blood. The whole situation makes Rose snort under her breath, which earns her an apathetic stare from her brother and a flustered, brief moment of Kanaya’s eyes on hers.

“Hello,” she offers, and there’s warmth in her belly when Kanaya greets her in kind which lingers long after the shop’s gone quiet again.

 

***

 

“Okay, guys, eyes on the prize,” Dirk repeats for what might be the fifth time by now: his fussy personality doesn't seem to be meshing well with the centrifugal melange of people he’s gathered under the shade of the maple tree that stands tall in the middle of the Lalondes’ garden. It’s good to see him like this though, focused and determined even as Roxy whistles directly in his ear with a blade of grass, making Jade bark out a raucous laugh, or as John tries to make a snapped branch in front of him levitate. Rose suspects he might actually be having fun behind his shades.

“Skaia above, you guys need to—” A pause, what sounds like a poorly concealed huff of laughter. “I need you to fucking _shut up_.”

A merciful silence settles over the group and Dirk exhales through his nose, eyeing each and every of them. When he opens his mouth to speak Roxy beats him to the punch.

“Welcome, ladies and gents, to the Let My Baby Brother Snog His Crush Already committee. In short, L. M. B. B. S. H. C. A.”

“Objection, Your Honor!” John nearly shoots up to his feet with the force of what Rose presumes to be his indomitable disapproval. “That acronym sucks!”

“It is kind of a mouthful,” Kanaya agrees in a pensive murmur from where she’s sitting in between Jade and Rose. “Which defeats the purpose of acronyms, I think?”

Roxy looks most definitely undaunted by the acronym mutiny that’s taking place in front of her. “Your nitpicky attitudes are what’s defeating _my_ purpose, kids. Now, as I was saying…”

John and Jade dissolve into a buzz of giggles and Dirk exhales again, more slowly this time. Rose decides it’s time to take pity on him, not to mention herself; her knees are starting to feel numb from sitting down in the grass and judging by how much the sun has moved across the sky she muses she might have an hour at best till violin practice.

She cuts to the chase. “Our common goal is to get Dave, my disastrous twin brother, to pair up with Karkat, the boy he inexplicably seems to fancy, for the Grapes Crushing.” Something inside of her always tries to rebel at the fact that everyone in her community seems to view an event dedicated to stomping barefoot on tons of innocent grape as the pinnacle of romance, when it’s really just couples (one from Prospit, one from Derse, that’s the tradition) standing inside huge barrels and awkwardly holding hands for leverage as they get their good robes drenched in juice. Nonetheless, that’s what the L. M. B. B. S. H. C. A. committee is set on accomplishing and Rose is nothing short of an overachiever.

It’s gonna drive Dave so up the wall.

“Thank you, Rosie,” Dirk says in his best no nonsense tone, which happens to be his usual one. “Now, for that to happen they’ll need a little push. Who wants to revise the plan for the class?”

Jade’s hand flies up as she yells, “me, me! I’ll ask Nepeta out this year.”

“Traitor,” Rose whispers, and gets duly ignored.

“That’ll leave Karkat without his usual partner—”

“I’ll also leave _me_ without my usual partner.”

“While John will go with Roxy, leaving Dave in the same pinch. Ta-da!”

Jade looks way too happy about the whole thing, a twitch of her ears that matches the faint flush of her cheeks, and Rose has to wonder if she’s lost her Grapes Crushing partner for good, not just for their little matchmaking stunt. Then again, there’s something about her best friend moving her first steps in the realm of teenage crushes that makes her feel something akin to secondhand excitement. Maybe she’ll survive the betrayal.

“Um, I have a question.” Kanaya’s voice is soft, crisscrossed by thin worry lines. Rose thinks it sounds like the brown and red leaves scattered around them. “How do we know Nepeta will, uh, acquiesce?”

Jade clicks her tongue. “My genuine charm, Kanaya, is how.”

 

***

 

There’s a rhythmic sound in the periphery of her attention and Rose realizes belatedly that it’s her own foot tapping on the ground. Grimacing, she wills it to a stop.

She’s a bundle of nerves.

Asking Kanaya to be her partner for the Grapes Crushing had been easy, she’d been able to tell herself she simply needed to find someone after Jade’s trampling over twelve long years of friendship (the irony of the trampling in relation to the Crushing isn’t lost on Rose; she smirks) so that she wouldn’t get paired up with someone she doesn’t like, or worse, one of the _elderly_. Not noticing the small, graceful O of Kanaya’s mouth after her invitation had been somewhat harder and stopping the memory from playing out in front of her every time she closed her eyes for the rest of the week downright impossible. So now she’s here, wrapped in many more shades of purple than it could ever be sensible, scouring the crowd for the familiar glow of Kanaya’s skin as her insides knot themselves into Squiddles.

At least she’s seen Dave leading Karkat somewhere by the hand, shades and carefully crafted front not enough to hide his own Squiddle Bowels situation. Perfect Success.

“Did I keep you waiting?” comes Kanaya’s voice from behind her. It makes Rose squeak out a noise deserving of lying down inside of someone’s barrel and be stomped on together with the grapes until all the shame’s squeezed out of her like juice.

“Not at all,” she says, or rather rasps, after she’s regained some semblance of composure. She fiddles with all the silverware clinking at her wrists for a moment, then offers Kanaya her arm in what she hopes to be an appropriate, courtly gesture. “Shall we go crush some wine babies?”

Kanaya makes a face like she’s about to voice her discomfort about Rose’s choice of words (she does take her arm though, Elder Ones be thanked) when the sound of someone clearing their throat cuts her off. They both fall silent as Feferi speaks, her volume amplified by magic so that it’ll carry across the whole place: her speech is always more or less the same year after year, merely a formal introduction to the event she’s obliged to deliver as the future chief, but it’s always endearing to watch her stand tall as she nearly swims in her ceremonial frills.

“That will be all!” Feferi concludes with a flourish, then laughs a bit as the crowd erupts in cheers. Kanaya must have taken that as her cue to proceed because she’s steering Rose toward the nearest barrel with the utmost grace.

Rose can’t wait for the jumping around to justify the redness of her cheeks.

“So,” Kanaya says conversationally, although Rose is sure she can see a shadow of the same red dusting her ears, “do you believe in the horrorterrors’ share?”

Their feet make a squelching sound stepping on the grapes for the first time and Kanaya’s weight leaves her side, resting on the tips of their intertwined fingers now.

Rose ponders it. “There _is_ a scientific explanation to that specific percentage of alcohol evaporating during the ageing process, but why bother with that when we can believe our monstrous gods above are the ones stealing it with their grubby, slimy tentacles.”

She must have picked the right answer because Kanaya snorts. Dear Skaia, does Rose like the sound of that, or the purple spattering the hem of her golden skirt as they dance their way through the grapes. Maybe all the romantic fools she knows are onto something after all.

 

***

 

“Karkat showed me the clouds yesterday.” There’s a dreamy quality to the timbre of Dave’s voice, soft and glossy as satin, and Rose burrows her nose deeper in the scarf she’s knit him herself last Yule; it still smells of cinnamon and cloves from earlier, when Dave insisted on wearing it while he was helping Roxy and Jane out with baking… something. Could be a harmless birthday cake or pastries rigged with curses just for, quoting Jane, _the kicks_ , and who’s Rose to get in the way of the kicks.

The bed creaks as Dave shifts to accommodate her snuggling closer.

“I think I saw you in one,” he continues. “You were—”

“Don’t wanna know! I’ll be damned before I let some floaty crystal ball suck me into its deadly spiral of preemptive consequences, no thank you and all the jazz.”

Dave’s chin presses down on the top of her head as he laughs, their knees knock together with the curling and uncurling of his giggles. Rose can’t quite muster enough indignation to outweigh the warm, fizzy feeling that comes over her every time she knows one of her siblings is happy.

“Rose, shit and _fuck_ , you’re— you’re a Seer, your whole shtick is literally being a floaty crystal ball sans the floaty, because you’d jack John’s swag and that ain’t cool, man, you’re so full of…” He trails off, still breathless with laughter, and Rose could make an educated guess about how hard he’s searching for something entirely too absurd to finish her off, while at the same time killing whatever point he was trying to make with gusto. “Whatever the fuck are Skaian clouds even made of, you’re full of that, okay, full like a stuffed bunny that’s seen better days. One of your little button eyes is dangling ‘cause the thread’s all unraveling there, Rose, it’s so fucking tragic I tell you.”

“Thanks, that was especially garbled. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, have fun elucubrating on _that_ imagery melange, sis.”

Rose snorts. “Maybe I can even crank out some phallic subtext if I squint hard enough at Freud’s portrait I always carry on my persona for spiritual guidance.”

Outside, a bird gurgles its little song, maybe searching for company, and Rose hums with what she hopes won’t sound too much like mushy content to her brother. Last time she checked she still had a grimdark reputation to uphold.

“I’ve started teaching Kanaya some Eldritch,” she says after a while, “so that when I whisk her to Derse for a dream date, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, she won’t go full Prospit on me and tell me the calamari salad in the sky wants to kill us.”

“Last time you taught someone Eldritch Jade made Oglogoth cry, Rosie.”

“Oglogoth is a sensitive soul, David, and I’m ready to risk some godly snot for my dream date.”

She’s ready to risk far more than that for the girl with a fridge full of blood bags who held her hands and crinkled with joy as they danced in a wooden barrel, asking Rose in all seriousness if she thought the horrorterrors would like their wine, but that shall stay as an implicit detail in the grand scheme of things, at least for a bit longer. Dave makes a noise like he agrees, or knows, and she closes her eyes against the red wool of his scarf.

“You were really happy, in that cloud,” he says later, once he thinks she’s dozed off, and for once golden light wraps itself around her.


End file.
